Title: Serendipity
Author: Tim Scott
Email: TScott2533@aol.com
Website: http://www.geocities.com/timmscott.geo/
Archive: This story was done specifically for the "Scullyfic
at the Improv" group.
Summary: I don't do summaries, I don't work weekends and I
don't do windows. Not even Windows '99. I do do a
hell of a Mickey Mouse impression, though.
Thanks: to Binah for giving me Spender's name.
Disclaimer: "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is
vanity." Particularly the conceit that anyone is
paying much attention to us. But just on the off-
chance that they are, this story is unauthorized and
is not making me a dime.
10/13/99
4:38am
Washington DC
Walter Reed Hospital
The morgue
"It was a dark and stormy night..." Mulder's voice echoed off the tiles of th
e chilly room, prudently trailed off and fell silent due to the thoroughly
unamused look on Skinner's face. He glanced to his right, but his partner
had that constipated look on her face again. "Well, it was!" he said
defensively.
Skinner took his glasses off and squeezed the bridge of his nose. With
closed eyes he intoned, in the ultra-patient voice Mulder had grown to detest
so much, "Agent Mulder. My sense of humor is not at its best before sunup.
So please tell me, as clearly and succinctly as you can, why you dragged me
out of bed at oh-dark-thirty." He put his glasses back on and regarded the
rather battered-looking agent. Mulder had been perfectly healthy the last
time the AD had seen him, three days ago.
Mulder cleared his throat. "Yes, sir." He looked at his partner, who
shrugged back at him, clearly leaving the ball in his court. The taller
agent winced as he tried to settle his right arm more comfortably in its
sling. "It's over, sir."
Skinner blinked for a moment before narrowing his eyes. Mulder returned his
boss' stare blandly. Succinct you want, succinct you get. The clarity might
have left something to be desired but the A. D. couldn't fault him for his
brevity. Besides, he hurt all over and Skinner's lost slumbers were not his
primary concern just now.
The glasses went back on the Assistant Director's face, he blew out a careful
breath and said, "Fine. Tell it your way. What is going on here, Agent
Mulder?"
Mulder smirked and nodded to his partner, who shook her head and walked to
one of many small doors set into the wall. She tugged on the handle, swung
the door wide and dragged out a long tray. There was a sheet-draped form on
the slab. Mulder, too wired to stay still for long, joined his partner and
pulled out the next one over. They glanced at each other before
simultaneously baring the faces of the bodies.
Skinner staggered back.
One was Alex Krycek. The other body they knew by many aliases, mostly
epithets. Earlier this year his birth name had finally come to light: C. G.
B. Spender. Formerly the chief assassin of a global conspiracy of
undetermined purposes, now probably working out the most efficient way to
take over Hell.
Slowly his balding boss approached the two bodies. He took his time
examining them, finally looking at Agent Scully with raised eyebrows. She
nodded. "It's confirmed, sir. It's really them."
The A. D. nodded back and slowly pushed both slabs back into their
receptacles before turning to face his subordinates. He closed his eyes,
took a deep breath and let it out slowly before opening them again. He fixed
Mulder with a stern look.
"Start at the beginning and don't leave anything out. None of the exercises
in fiction you enjoy making me read. The truth, Agent Mulder."
Mulder nodded and tried to settle his arm comfortably again. He opened his
mouth, then closed it again as Scully approached him. She dug a small bottle
out of her pocket, unscrewed it and handed him a pain pill. He made a face
but accepted it, dry-swallowed it and grimaced before turning to face their
boss again. Scully absently noted the time and settled back against an
autopsy table as her partner told the tale.
"We finished our shift of the stake-out you assigned us to last night.
Miller hasn't been apprehended yet, by the way, but it's just a matter of
time. We've got all the evidence we need to close the case and he doesn't
know it yet so all we have to do is pick him up when he comes home. Anyway
we got back to the Hoover building at 12:18am, to be precise, and Agent
Scully surprised me with a birthday cake."
Mulder paused to give his partner a fond glance. She smiled back at him, saw
the A. D. noticing and looked back at him defiantly. Skinner said, "Happy
birthday, Agent Mulder. What happened next?"
Mulder shook his head, forcibly returning his mind to the topic at hand.
"Actually it wasn't a cake, it was a cupcake with a candle in it. One of
those un-blow-out-able things where the flame keeps coming back no matter how
hard you blow? Anyway. The janitorial crew sang the song for me and we
left. Then she took me to a nice restaurant and bought me a late dinner and
a real birthday cake. The waiters sang that time."
Skinner ground his teeth together. Mulder looked innocent. "You said not to
leave anything out!" Skinner nodded and gestured for Mulder to continue.
"Anyway, we were headed for the car when I turned to make a smart remark,
something like 'who are you and what have you done with my partner' when I
slipped in a puddle of rainwater and fell down the stairs. I got this black
eye and broke my arm in two places..."
Behind her professional face Dana Scully relived that moment. It wasn't a
pleasant memory. Mulder tossed the statement off like it was no big deal.
He'd disappeared like going down a trapdoor. One moment wising off, as he
had all through dinner, making her laugh so hard her face hurt, the next
just... gone. By the time she got to the top of the stairs he was already in
a heap at the bottom.
She went down the stairs in nearly a controlled fall, her hands reaching for
her cell phone to call 911 as her eyes scanned his still form. She checked
him one-handed as she called it in, then dug out her mini-flashlight to check
his pupils. He was breathing normally. The rest could wait for the pros.
While she held Mulder's hand and spoke reassuringly to him, even though he
was obviously unconscious, she thought how ridiculous it was. All the
incredible dangers they'd faced through the years and now *this* had to bring
him down? He would almost certainly recover but, dammit, it wasn't a sure
thing.
Nothing was a sure thing.
For some reason it suddenly came home to her, like a bomb going off, that she
could lose him. She'd always known it, she wasn't some kind of unthinking
child to ignore the realities of the life they led, but for some reason the
knowledge had taken up residence in her gut now. Mulder was the one in shock
but she was doing the shaking. He'd always seemed so alive, so
indestructible before. It hit her like a speeding truck.
Then the EMTs arrived and she busied herself with giving them the necessary
information, getting their destination and chasing them to the ER. Through
the endless five minute drive she chanted oh please, oh please, oh please...
She filled out his paperwork, as she'd done a dozen times, smiled when the ER
nurses recognized him and joked about him being their best customer. She
wrapped herself in his trench coat and quietly trembled until they told her
she could see him.
Dana entered the curtained alcove on wobbly legs and watched the orderly help
her partner stay upright while a nurse slid the jacket over his shoulder.
The sling was very blue against his white shirt. She remembered the last
time she'd seen him in a similar situation, how he'd blurted that he loved
her. She grimaced as she recalled her reply and wondered yet another time if
the drugs had made him say what he said or if they just gave him the nerve.
He was concussed again, she could see that from the way he fought to stay
upright. That meant another sleepless night for both of them. She reviewed
her mental file of 'ways to amuse Mulder' as the nurse instructed her about
the care and feeding of head trauma cases. When Dana was satisfied that he
was oriented in all three spheres she thanked everyone and led him out to the
car.
She got him buckled in, climbed behind the wheel...
... and couldn't make herself turn the key in the ignition. They sat that
way for a moment.
"Um. Scully?" He sounded confused, which was only natural.
"Yes, Mulder?" Her own voice sounded calm enough. Good.
"Is it just me, or are we not moving?"
She turned to face him, unsure of what she was going to say and knowing that
it probably wasn't the best time to say it, but she knew herself well enough
to be sure that if she didn't say it now she might not ever tell him how she
felt. And he deserved better than that.
Not only that, but she deserved to tell him. But before she could open her
mouth the phone rang.
"We got a call from DCPD about a double homicide at a health club not twenty
minutes from the hospital," Mulder said. "I had to stay awake anyway so we
headed on over to see what was up."
Skinner held up a hand to halt the narrative. "Why did they call you for
something like that? It's not your department."
Mulder nodded, then winced at the pain the head movement cost him. "After
the immolations at El Rico Air Base we requested to be notified whenever
certain names hit any police database in the nation. When their
fingerprints" -- Mulder gestured at the wall -- "turned up we got the call."
Mulder put a hand to his head and reeled a bit. Scully took his arm and led
him to a wall without drawers, something he could lean against. She took up
the story to give him a moment's rest.
"The towel boy at the health club called it in. It seems he was making his
rounds and found a body wearing a purple speedo, if you can believe it,
floating in the pool. When the body was removed from the water it was found
to have three .22 caliber bullet holes in the head." She paused to gesture
at the drawer containing the remains of the Cancerman.
Skinner shook his head.
Scully continued. "When the officers went to search his locker for ID they
found Krycek's body." She shook her head. "I can't believe he'd do
something so stupid but it seems that, in the course of his own search of Mr.
Spender's locker, he found a box of mint green tic-tacs and ate one. These
tic-tacs seem to have been part of Spender's exit strategy. They contained
cyanide."
Skinner's jaw dropped. He seemed unable to come up with a reply that fit the
situation. Well, neither could she. To cover this Dana picked up a box
containing Krycek's personal effects and set it on the autopsy table. She
reached into it, produced what appeared to be a hand-held computer and gave
it to her boss.
"This device contains a great deal of information. Some friends of ours
hacked into it. They are confident that they can find the algorithm that
will deactivate the nano-mechanisms infesting your body. I would guess that
you will be your own man again in under a week."
She raised an eyebrow at his look of surprise. "Oh, come on, sir. You
didn't really think we'd stop investigating it just because you told us to,
did you?"
Skinner squinted at her, weighing the device in his hands. "Yes, actually, I
did."
She reddened. "Well, you're half right. I wanted to move on to other
things. *He*..." here she gestured at her partner, "... in his usual
pigheaded manner, refused to let it alone. Mulder gets the credit for this
one, sir."
Mulder, eyes still closed, smiled at this.
"Goddammit, Mulder, will you quit that? You're going to cut your own throat!"
He turned to face her. "Goddammit, Scully, *look* at me! I look like a poor
grade of salvage! He's gonna be here any minute, we are about to give our
final report. Let me at least be clean shaven when that happens."
She stared at him. "What do you mean, 'last report'?"
He turned back to the mirror and tried once again to shave left-handed. He
nicked himself a second time and swore. She snatched the razor out of his
hand, spun him around and pushed him back against the sink.
"I'll do it! Now tell me what you're talking about."
With a forefinger she turned his head to the side and, using long clean
strokes, began to depilate her partner's face.
"He was the last one, Scully. Krycek was never a mover and shaker except in
his wannabe mind, he was just muscle with delusions of gender. Spender was
the last one who really knew what was going on. With him dead, my last
chance of finding Samantha is gone. The conspirators are all dead, the Plan
is finished. It's over. Finito. Ended. Time to take my marbles and go
home while I still have a few left."
The razor paused for a moment, then continued another straight swath through
the lather on his face. She turned his head and began working on the other
side, giving herself time to get her voice under control.
"You're quitting?"
"That word has such negative connotations. I prefer 'retiring'."
"What will you do, Mulder? The work has been your life."
He decided to wait until she was finished. No sense aggravating a woman who
has a razor at your throat. It took her a moment to do the last stroke to
her own satisfaction, then another while she cleaned his face with paper
towels.
What to tell her, though? The truth was the first thing that came to mind.
On the other hand, Scully never seemed too happy to hear his version of the
truth. Oh, well. He'd try one last time.
While Skinner was still mulling over the implications of what he'd heard
Scully picked up a second box from the floor and set it down next to the
first one. She removed a sheet of paper and gave it to Skinner, too. The
man's eyebrows climbed.
"Cain Gideon Barnabas Spender? You're shitting me."
Mulder smiled, his eyes still closed. "Finally found someone with a worse
name than mine. No wonder nobody ever called him by name. They were
probably afraid he'd kill 'em."
Scully chimed in. "His first name was appropriate, anyway."
Mulder finally opened his eyes, squinting against the fluorescent lights. He
made his unsteady way over to the other two living occupants of the room.
With his left hand he produced his pistol and credentials from inside his
sling and placed them on one of the boxes of personal effects.
"I won't be needing these any more. Put them someplace... safe." He
delivered this sentence with a razor-edged smile from the other side of the
autopsy table, then nodded his head less astringently. "You were a better
boss than I had a right to expect. Thank you for all your help. Goodbye."
Mulder limped out of the room without another word or a backward glance,
leaving his former boss stunned. He turned to Scully in confusion. She
seemed to be taking it pretty well. Not a blink, not a twitch. Incredible.
He'd been so sure they were...
The redheaded woman produced her own weapon and ID and placed them atop the
other box. Then she put both hands on the table and leaned toward him, her
eyes an icy blue.
"Mulder has been a lone wolf all his life. He never expected much from the
system, from the FBI, and so he was never disappointed when he got no
support. I, on the other hand, am a Navy brat. I worked the system for us,
partly because I've been doing it all my life and partly because, even if it
did occur to Mulder to do it, he'd be terrible at it."
Skinner nodded, waiting for the rest of it.
"We put our trust in you and you failed us. Worse than that, you betrayed
us. Both you personally, the FBI and the government as a whole. I could
enumerate all the times it's happened but you know them as well as I do. Now
that we're no longer useful to you I can just imagine what you will all feel
free to do."
Ah. Now they were getting to it. He'd seen her claws come out before, of
course, but never all the way like this. She'd always left herself an out
before. She really *did* know how to work the system!
"This being the case, I think you should tell your corporate masters to think
several times before they bother either of us. During the course of my own
investigations, while Agent Mulder was searching for aliens, I learned many
things about the entirely human men who conspired to experiment on people
without their consent. Just working by myself I documented enough to know
what a firestorm would begin if I made it public. The Nuremberg trials were
nothing in comparison, and you can look back on Kenneth Starr with fond
memories. Am I making myself clear to you, sir?"
He nodded carefully. "I will convey your message, Miss Scully."
She turned and left the room, her heels decisively click-clacking up the
hall. Toward the elevator leading up from the basement of the hospital.
Toward the rain that was still falling. Toward her freedom.
That evening, as she carried a tray laden with sliced fruit and other finger
foods toward her bathtub, she was still waiting for the fact of it to sink in.
She was free.
No more living at the whim of bureaucrats. No more phone calls at ungodly
hours to chase mutants or aliens or what-have-you. No more denying herself
the things she wanted and (let's admit it, Dana) needed. No more Old Boy's
Club! Now there was a reason to celebrate!
She bumped the bathroom door open with her hip, slipped inside and set the
tray down on the tub, reaching back to kick the door shut as she did so. She
raised one corner of the wet washcloth that hid the eyes of the tub's
occupant.
"Mulder? You still in there?"
"Jeez, Scully, how can you stand the water this hot? I'm afraid to move," he
mumbled from behind his cloth screen.
"Oh, don't be such a baby. Admit it, you feel better."
"I feel like someone surgically removed my bones. This is great, Scully.
Thanks for doing this for me." He sighed contentedly. Well, she was
assuming he was smiling under there, the muscles of his face -- the ones she
could see, anyway -- were contracting in the proper ways. She picked up a
slice of apple and lifted the bottom of the washcloth, exposing his mouth.
Yes, that was a smile. No question about it. She took a second to admire
that mouth openly.
"Open wide, Mulder."
"Why?"
She scolded him. "Don't be so suspicious, Mulder. Just shut up and do as
you're told."
His right arm was propped up safely away from the water. He used his left to
remove the washcloth so he could see her. "You've gotten mighty bossy all of
a sudden." But he opened his mouth in acquiescence. She popped the food in
and watched him chew. Maybe that was her key to peace and quiet? Keeping
his mouth occupied?
"Did you really mean what you said earlier, Mulder?"
It took him less than a second to figure out what she meant. His gaze
softened and he nodded.
"Say it again."
He chuckled. "You're such a girly girl, Scully. It's cute." Her face must
have changed because he swallowed quickly and said, "Okayokayokay! Jeez!
Take it easy, will you?"
She relaxed, sat back on the little stool next to the tub. He sighed.
"I take it you're referring to what I said I'd do now that I no longer work
for the Bureau?"
Dana nodded. Mulder sat up straight in the tub. With his left hand he
reached over, took a grape and popped it into her mouth before taking another
for himself. They watched each other as they chewed. Mulder seemed
entranced by her face. Finally he sighed again and repeated what he'd said
earlier.
"I have no idea what I'm going to do, Scully. Probably I'll take a year or
so to just think about all that's happened, try to make some sense of it.
I'd like to some traveling for pleasure while I do so, see some of the places
I've always wanted to see. What I do really doesn't matter to me right
now... as long as can do it together."
She closed her eyes, leaning into the sensations that this speech called up
as though it were a strong wind. His voice continued, filling her ears with
wonder. Mulder *never* talked like this!
"I have money of my own, Scully. I never have to work again if I don't want
to. Or I can work until my dying day if that pleases me. Come with me. Or
tell me where you want to go and I'll come there if you'll let me. We can
get married or not, it's entirely up to you. Just so we're together. Take
as long as you need to make up your mind. It will probably take a week or so
to wind up my affairs here in DC. If you haven't decided by then, the Gunmen
can always find me."
She kept her eyes closed for a moment, enjoying the way the words echoed in
her mind, enjoying the heat from the steam and from the man in her tub. She
gasped when that man's fingers began tracing lines over her face. The
sensations were so intense!
Her eyes popped open, along with her mouth, and Mulder sat back in the tub
again. His hand went with him, damn it. She grabbed it before it got away.
"You're turning into a prune, Mulder. Time to get out."
She could see him considering several smart remarks. She turned to get a
towel from the rack so she didn't see his face but the smirk was evident from
the false submission in his voice.
"Yes, dear."
She flipped the switch to drain the tub before she helped him get vertical
again, the whole lovely length of him. My, my, my. He held her shoulder
with his good hand as he stepped out of the tub and stood patiently while she
patted him dry.
They spent the day alternating naps with glorious sex. Sometimes it was slow
and almost sleepy. Sometimes it was hot and hard and fast and furious. And
the thought that kept echoing in Dana's mind, again and again, was that if he
could do this to her one handed...!
Shortly before midnight, as they spooned hot fudge sundaes into each others'
mouths, Mulder rocked his hips forward every now and then. Like the tide he
slipped into and out of her, just enough to maintain his erection as he fed
her ice cream and caressed her face while she gasped his name and threatened
him with a dire fate if he stopped.
Finally she rolled him onto his back and climbed astride, keeping one eye on
her bedside clock. As midnight approached she moved faster and faster until,
just before the numbers clicked over, he shouted wordlessly as his whole body
*thrummed*!
He blinked up at her in stunned shock as she grinned at him and tried to get
her breath back. As sleep rose up to take him she leaned down and whispered,
"I love you too, Mulder. Happy birthday."
And his smile was something to see.
The End
Story elements were supplied by:
1) jjordao -- Scully shaving Mulder because he has a broken arm
and nicked himself when he tried to do it alone
2) spicedrum -- a box of minty green tic-tacs laced with cyanide
3) the_wt -- CSM in a purple speedo (and you'll pay for this,
Mel...)
4) haphmeth -- trick birthday candles, the kind that re-light
5) fabiana -- Mulder & Scully sharing a sundae, feeding each
other